This ADAMHA RSA will provide the PI an opportunity to develop a model of the reinforcement process into a general theory of performance based on principles of arousal, temporal constraint, and coupling. It will give the PI the time necessary to acquire the theoretical tools required to develop the core model, which treats reinforcement as the coupling of these responses and incentives that fall within the window of an organism's short-term memory . That hypothesis is validated by tuning experiments in which the experimenter's definition of the response is varied until it is maximally effective in controlling behavior, thus providing a template of the animal's definition. Under this RSA the theory will be developed in a number of interlinked ways: 1) Validate the model of arousal in terms of extent literature on conditioning, extinction, and the partial- reinforcement extinction effect. Develop it for conditions of varying motivation, such as those occurring in closed economies and contexts where warm-up and satiation play significant roles. 2) Generate explicit performance rules relating arousal level to response rate, and to response latency and probability in discrete trials. 3) Derive mathematical models for contingency in the context of: 3a) Concurrent responses; 3b) Classical conditioning; 3c) Heterogeneous response classes; and 3d) Sequences of incentives of arbitrary number and spacing. 4) Replicate the tuning experiments with visual and auditory stimuli, to provide a bridge to the ubiquitous literature on short-term memory for stimuli. It will also permit him to 5) Continue to develop and begin to integrate theories of timing with this more general theory; 6) Extend the theory to forthcoming incentives, so as to provide a rationale for the steep and crossing discount functions that underlie all models of self control; 7) Embed the theory in a larger context, akin to mechanics, in which stimuli, responses, incentives, and time are represented in a multidimensional state-space. The award will make it possible for the candidate's skills to develop in pace with empirical results and to drive further research. It is consistent with the mission of ADAMHA as it promises a more accurate picture of how incentives interact with responses to generate habits. The leading causes of death and disability are behavioral; existing theory is near-impotent in helping us to consistently avoid rich foods, drugs, alcohol, and violence; it is not much better in promoting medical compliance, seat-belt usage, exercise, and safe sex. The proposed research provides novel and effective reconceptualizations of the role of memory in the reinforcement process, and of their interaction with motivation. It can help us learn how to more effectively couple healthful behaviors to their consequences. The PI's approach to theory development and deployment evolved in collaboration with Dr. Hestenes; their plan to review the psychologists' way of knowing through modelling will provide a powerful template for students; way of coming to know their discipline. The value of this RSA accrues both to the PI in terms of the new quantitative skills he will acquire, and to the field in the new interpretation of memory and performance he offers.